Commandments and Promises (Aug. 20, 2023) Exodus 19.3-6

How many of you have ever heard of a primer? I’m not talking about a primer that one puts on walls to get ready to paint. I’m talking about a book that was used in schools to help students learn to read and write. A book that contained some stories, quotations and other general knowledge that those who wrote the primer thought that the reader should know. Many times, the information in this primer was memorized and many could quote what they had learned years later. For those who do know what a primer is, how many have ever used one? They fell out of practice many years ago. But there are many in the past who learned the basic skills of reading and writing using a primer.

Is there a Christian primer? Something that folks have memorized and can recall without a moment’s hesitation? Albert Curry Winn believed so and he wrote a book entitled The Christian Primer. In this book Winn makes the case that there are certain things that many Christians have learned over the years and have put those to use in their lives. The ones that Winn uses are the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments.

I know that many of you have the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed memorized. I have seen you recite those from memory, and it is impressive. And I am willing to bet that many of you know the Ten Commandments as well, though that number would be less than it used to be. I have preached a couple of series on the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed in the past few years and so I thought it was time to do one on the Ten Commandments.

I will begin with an introduction to the commandments and over the next few weeks we will cover all of them to remind us of what God charged the Hebrews to remember and to live. The commandments are words to live by and words to emulate and so a study of them would be helpful to us all.

First things first. The commandments belong to what we know as the Hebrew Bible or what I like to call the First Testament. They are found in the second and fifth books of the Pentateuch, also known as the Torah, which is the first five books in the Hebrew Bible. They are given to the people who have been taken out of bondage in Egypt by God and led to the Promised Land.

In Hebrew they are known as the Ten Words and have been divided in several ways by both the Hebrew text and the Christian world. I won’t go into these divisions, but I will say that the Protestants and Roman Catholics are still fighting about these divisions.

One division that I will touch upon is that of the tablets. It is said that the commandments or words were brought down on two tablets. These two tablets give a division that needs to be discussed. The first tablet establishes duties to God. These all contain the phrase “the Lord your God” and let the people know what their role to God is. The second tablet is a set of duties toward fellow humans. It is a set of ethics. The division of these two tablets is usually this: the first four deal with God while the last six deal with fellow humans.

So, the question has been raised as to why we include these commandments in a Christian primer. Are they not law? Are we not a people of grace and no more under the law? It would seem so to Paul who said in many places why he believed that the law was not to be followed any longer by Christians. A few points that he makes are that the law enslaves and brings death. It arouses sinful passions and makes us to know sin. It gives sin strength and life. By it sin kills us. All in all, Paul makes it sound like a curse. It is one of the things over which there is victory in the death of Jesus. Why is it in the Christian primer?

Martin Luther did not like the law either. He believed that the law and Gospel should be far apart. But he did find some profit in the law. He looked at it as good for two reasons. The first was that it served as a bridle to the wicked to the good of the civil commonwealth. In other words, the law served as a deterrent. The second use of the law according to Luther was a hammer, something that showed us our sinfulness and God’s wrath so that it broke down the self-righteousness we have and drives us to seek Christ. This was all the good that Luther saw for the Law.

But according to the First Testament the law is a good thing. Psalms 1 and 119 are just a few of the texts that show the delight in the law. The psalmist in 119 says that the word (law) is “a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path” and that “I treasure your word (law) in my heart.” Jesus said that he had come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. And John Calvin even had good to say about the law. He recognized the points that Luther made and said there was a third use of the law which to him was the principal one. This use of the law was to teach believers more thoroughly what God’s will is and to urge them to well doing. Seen from these angles, the commandments do belong in the Christian primer.

So, why are there the divergent views of the commandments and the law? Let us go back to the beginning. Israel was enslaved in Egypt. God delivered them out of that slavery, delivered them from the pursuing Egyptians and brought then to Mount Sinai. There God says to them: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”[1] The commandments, or words, that follow in Exodus 20 are not a recipe for gaining God’s favor; that has already been gained. They are not requirements for how to live so that God will get them out of bondage; that has already occurred as well. What they are is a blueprint for how to live as God’s people. Grace precedes duty and the grace was given before the commandments.

The negative view of the law that comes from Paul comes from his background. In his day the Pharisees misunderstood the law. They believed that if all of Israel followed the law from one Sabbath to the next then the Messiah would come and deliver them from the Romans. Can you see how this would put a yoke on the people? They were a way to personal righteousness. They were a way of saying “Look at me and all that I have done to follow the Law. Won’t God be pleased with me?” There were even those who were zealous Christians who believed that converts must become Jews first and follow the law. Do you now understand why Paul was so zealous against the law? Luther was fighting against a merit-based thinking of his day. I know that I struggle with it myself. I look to see that if I follow the commandments, then good things will follow for me. But that only enslaves me more. The law was there to show us a way to follow God, not a way the earn God’s favor. As with the Israelites the favor has already been granted and there is nothing that we can do to earn it or make it better.

“But where is the promise side of the sermon title?” you might ask. Winn states that for centuries we have stressed the demand side of the commandments. This is the side where God tells us to do or not do things. The demand is there and that is all that we see of it. But there is a promise to these words as well. In Hebrew the words are worded to the future, “you shall not…” which implies that one will not do these things in the future as well as the present. So, what does that mean? Winn points out that a negative future can also express a promise: “As my people you will not have other gods, you will not make graven images to worship…you will not kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, covet.”[2]He says imagine a world and society where those things that are so much a part of who we are they simply do not happen any longer. That is a promise! The demands are transformed from something of a list of no-no’s to something that promises the living of the future here and now as though the kingdom has already come and that we are God’s people. Isn’t that a great thing to look forward to?

The ten commandments are here in Christianity for a reason. We cannot understand our future unless we understand our past. For that reason, we will look at each of the commandments in turn so that we can see the demand and the promise of God. Remember, these are not boring rules that tell us that God is going to get us if we do not conform but promises of what life will be like when we no longer must have them with us. They are a teaching tool and a magnificent one at that. So, let us take a journey and travel together. Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print. [2]Winn, Albert Curry. A Christian Primer: The Prayer, The Creed, The Commandments. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press. 1990. 191.